From black dogs to puppies

My last post was about battling the black dog. Well, I have a much nicer dog post to talk about today, and that is this little fellow:

Barney

Meet Barney. This little guy is coming home to live with us in January. He is a golden doodle (think of a retriever with a perm!) and will eventually become a running buddy for me when he is old enough. A lot of people have said "a puppy AND 3 children...are you crazy?!!" but I'm guessing that it takes a special kind of crazy to run a marathon, and I love dogs and miss having one in my life. It'll be a very good incentive to get up and out of bed in the mornings to go for a run; you can't turn a dog off like you can an alarm clock! 

On a training front I had a tough run yesterday as I felt rough and kept needing the loo, but it turned out I had a temperature and tummy bug so I'm not being too hard on myself. I absolutely smashed my previous sub 30 minute 5k last Wednesday by getting a sub 28 minute one. I'm getting faster! I have my sights set on a sub 25 minute 5k, but I'll probably need to work on that. That said, I have a session coming up with TT and I don't know what he's doing but it's definitely making me a more efficient runner, so maybe that'll knock another minute off my time.

I think the biggest thing I can take from this past week is that just as you have absolutely awesome runs, you also have totally rubbish runs, but not to dwell on the bad ones, rather remember the good ones and always stay positive.